FREMONT, Calif. — Wilhan Martono, a San Francisco-area man who owned the adult classified ads website CityXGuide, was arrested Wednesday in Fremont by federal authorities, following his indictment in Texas earlier this month, in the most high-profile multi-state legal action since the shuttering of Backpage.com in 2018.
Martono's arrest and the seizure of CityXGuide by authorities, who replaced the website with a law-enforcement placard, is the first such raid since President Donald Trump signed the FOSTA/SESTA legislative package into law in April 2018. The Backstage.com raids and seizures predated Trump's signature ceremony by a few days.
According to the Associated Press and the East Bay Times, the 46-year-old Martono is being held in the Santa Rita jail without bail after his Wednesday arrest, awaiting extradition to Dallas.
The Texas indictment against Martono was filed June 2 and includes 28 federal charges, among them conspiracy, money laundering and promotion and facilitation of prostitution.
The indictment links Martono to a network of adult-oriented websites like CityXGuide, BodyRubShop and variations on the name of the shuttered Backpage.com.
Prosecutors also claim that in January 2019 Martono sent an email expressing a desire to take over “from where Backpage left off.”
Prosecutors allege that Martono first purchased CityXGuide in 2004, but stepped up his adult classifieds operation in 2018, after the government seizure of Backpage.com and the arrest of its owners Michael Lacey and Jim Larkin. Lacey and Larkin have continued fighting the government’s case against them and their company on a variety of grounds, including Section 230 protections and First Amendment rights.
Sex worker advocacy groups have denounced FOSTA/SESTA and explained that shuttering online adult classified ad websites would further endanger sex workers and force them into the streets, where they are regularly victimized by law enforcement, or into the hands of criminal enterprises.
The First Criminal Use of FOSTA
“This appears to be the first use of the criminal prohibitions on promotion and facilitation of prostitution created by FOSTA,” said adult industry attorney Lawrence Walters. “This is the most important thing: it is the first time they are using this statute. We might see some challenges to the law in defense of this case.”
Walters said the difference between the Woodhull case, which he is handling, and the CityXGuide indictment is that “the Woodhull is a civil challenge to the constitutionality of FOSTA, but this would be the first time the government has used FOSTA for criminal prosecution.”
The Backpage.com prosecution ramped up during the 2016 presidential campaign, and Kamala Harris, then California Attorney General, made that action — and her vocal support for FOSTA/SESTA, legislation drafted by religiously inspired Republicans from the Midwest — part of her claim to “bipartisanship.”
This new prosecution of Martono and CityXGuide comes at a similar point in the 2020 presidential campaign, complicated by current nationwide protests against law enforcement abuses, and a questioning by both Democrats and some Republicans of the independence of Attorney General William Barr and his leadership of the Department of Justice.
